Two Hours Later

Two hours ago the skies poured,
And rumbled, and flashed.
Now it is evening, and the clouds,
Their work done, are moving on.

Some way off a great purple band
Stretches across the sky,
Rolling like a giant freight train,
Bound for another state with cargo.

Around it are patches of open blue,
And also gauzy rose,
Here and there spots of gold
Lit by the sun just over the trees.

Beneath it all, in the middle distance,
Repainted the other day,
The city water tower gleams,
Its new surface freshly washed.

Footprints

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime;
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints in the sands of time.

--Longfellow

I.
Each day for over two weeks
I passed the house and marveled
At all the cars sitting outside,
Never less than half a dozen.

Inside a man lay in hospice,
Passing three decades early,
Surrounded by friends and family;
No man ever died less alone.

He had a very hard passage.
He spent it telling those by him
About where he was headed,
And how he hoped they’d follow.

We had mutual friends, but never met,
And I did not intrude by going in.
I thought as I passed what a great life
He had to be part of so many others.

II.
Last year, when she turned fourteen,
She began having trouble moving.
So they scanned her body and found
Something there that didn’t belong.

At Children’s they cut open a couple
Of her vertebrae for a closer look.
They found a monster wrapped
Inseparably around the spinal cord.

She’s home now, and rather weak,
She can walk, but one leg halts.
She’s taking chemo pills and radiation;
The doctors give her about five years.

She says to others “God’s got this.”
Soon she hopes to stand up and sing
Before all on Sunday, in the belief
That somebody needs to hear her story.

III.
She’s twenty-seven, and the last few years
In many lives would have been a time
Of starting a career, and falling in love,
Maybe marrying and beginning a family.

Instead she has spent it studying hard—
Linguistics, languages, cultures, and more.
Getting ready for a special task she chose
After much thought and deliberation.

Soon she will go to the other side
Of our globe, thousands of miles away
From anywhere or anyone she’s known
To work with people she’s not at all like.

She doesn’t go to tell them what to do,
But to study how they speak, turn it into
Written words of power, and offer those.
She expects to spend her life there.

IV.
It is sublime to witness a mighty storm,
Or wind-whipped waters, or wild torrents.
It can bring fear, and with it awe, and
A sense of something greater than us.

When, fearful, we see our plans wrecked,
And our lives beyond our own control,
We can react with despair or impotent rage
At becoming toys of an indifferent fate;

We can struggle to make everything safe,
To spend our days grabbing all we can,
Gathering rosebuds while we may,
And cultivating our own indifference.

Or we can accept that life isn’t about us,
But part of something more important;
Accept the freedom of not having our way,
And of learning to trust, wait, and hope.

Then life may be sublime—scary at times,
Not what we bargained for, yet far more
Awesome, part of something bigger
And more lasting than it could be alone.

A life leaving footprints that can linger
In those ever-shifting sands, traces
That can guide others through the wastes,
To their final safety on the far side of life.

Saturday Life

When the Rabbi’s enemies came for him,
His followers all turned and fled;
Running to save their own scared lives
Like a flock that has lost its head.

On Friday they saw him put on trial,
Convicted on the basis of lies,
And killed in the most agonizing way
Cruel Latin minds could devise.

Saturday was scarcely less awful a time,
As they hid and cringed in dread,
Their hope in an ugly world was gone;
All they had worked for was dead.

Then on Sunday they heard wild stories,
Of the Rabbi up walking around;
And went to check on the Rabbi’s tomb,
Where there was nothing found.

That awful Saturday finished at last,
Out into the world they went;
Joyfully spreading to all the good news
Of why the Rabbi had been sent.

For twenty centuries since that day
We’ve lived in a Saturday age;
The law is slacked, justice goes undone,
And we suffer the wicked’s rage.

And I must live out a Saturday life,
Where others had it only a day;
But this advantage I have over them—
I know Sunday is on its way.

I like this very much, Daphne. As you know, its sentiments are very alien to me, but I think you have crafted this very well and it also feels very sincere. The last line feels very forceful thanks to the way the poem is constructed, and you have used the rhythm and rhyme skilfully.

Thanks, Evans. That means a lot.